EDELWEISS FINANCIAL
SERVICES LIMITED

The group has been diversifying within each of its key businesses, as well as entering new businesses over the past few years. It is now present in the retail and wholesale lending segments, securities broking, wealth management, asset management, insurance, stressed-asset management, and alternate assets. Many of these have now attained sizeable scale and are likely to lend greater stability to earnings

While the group remains a large player in the traditional broking business, it has also build a sizeable lending book. In the distressed assets segment, EARC remains the largest ARC in India. The established market position in capital market-related businesses should provide the group with a regular stream of fee-based income over the medium term

The asset quality in the credit business has deteriorated in the last 18 months. While the asset quality in the retail loan book remained comfortable, the asset quality in the wholesale loan book deteriorated significantly

Furthermore, given the current macro environment, asset quality of the group's exposures to loans against property (LAP) and loans to micro, SME sectors would be key monitorables. This stems from the sensitivity of borrowers of such loans to the current environment

Profitability has been lower than those of other large, financial sector groups. While profitability was on an improving trend over the past few fiscals, it has been significantly impacted in fiscal 2020. With higher credit costs, return on assets (annualised) and return on equity (annualised) fell sharply to 0.5% and 3.4%, respectively, during the first 9 months of fiscal 2020 (1.6% and 12.6%, respectively, in fiscal 2019). Provisioning costs, increased by 71% year-on-year (y-o-y) to Rs 651 crore during this period.